


Scientia Potestas Est

by Margot_Lescargot



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: David Mellenby Lives AU, M/M, bamf Seawoll, established Seagale, fragment, implied past Thomas Nightingale/David Mellenby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24229345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margot_Lescargot/pseuds/Margot_Lescargot
Summary: One scene of an otherwise-unspecified Mellenby Lives AU, produced primarily to record the meeting - in this particular verse - of Seawoll and Mellenby.
Relationships: Thomas Nightingale/Alexander Seawoll
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	Scientia Potestas Est

Alex pressed the doorbell of the Folly and stood back on the top step, enjoying the warmth of the May sun on his neck and admiring uncritically the bunch of ranunculus he’d brought for Molly.

The door mechanism swung open and he made to step inside, when he realised there was another person on the other side of the doorway - a man, someone he didn’t recognise - preparing to exit as he was entering. He was about to move to one side with a polite word of apology when he noticed the expression on the other man’s face, and his agitation as he struggled into his overcoat.

The man was small and wiry, about his age, with fine features and an air of nervous energy. As he attempted to put on his coat and leave, he cast a swift glance back over his shoulder into the atrium. Alex couldn’t see what or who the man was looking back at, but he suddenly realised who he was.

The flowers dropped to the floor. 

The man looked back at him, with a recovered smile of politeness, and made as if to edge past him. ‘Sorry. If you wouldn’t mind…’.

Alex stepped forward and blocked the doorway in its entirety.

‘Oh but I do. Dr Mellenby, isn’t it?’

Mellenby looked bemused and slightly affronted. ‘That’s right. I, er, ought to be getting up to UCL, so if you wouldn’t mind?’

‘You’ve already said that,’ said Alex. ‘And I’ve given you my answer, so let’s just step back inside for a moment shall we?’ and he pushed forward through the doorway, giving the smaller man no option but to retreat before him.

He felt the door close behind him, as Mellenby made a show of squaring his shoulders.

‘No. None of that.’ He looked beyond him and saw Thomas standing under the glass dome, his hands balled into fists, eyes blazing, and thought he detected a vague bundle of unrest that was Molly in the shadows at the back of the room. 

He looked down again at Mellenby. ‘Let’s just you and me have a little chat shall we?’ It had been a long time since Alex had been required to play the heavy, but in this particular situation, he was in no way averse.

In the time it had taken Alex to look around, Mellenby had recovered something of his composure. ‘Ah. You’d be the large policeman, I presume?’

Alex regarded him once more, as if something that had crawled from under a stone. He pushed forward again, leaving Mellenby with no option but to back up against the stand of Newton’s statue, until he could go no further. Having done so, he loomed over him.

‘Now I don’t know why you’ve come here today – tho’ I’ve got a fairly good idea – but let me make something absolutely fucking crystal clear…’

Mellenby made a good show of rolling his eyes, and Alex raised a sardonic eyebrow.

‘Oh. I’m sorry if I appear to you to be insufficiently serious, but hear this. I know that you know who I am, so I’ll keep it simple. You will not come here again. You will not try to gain access to any of the information that is kept here, or, in fact, access to this place at all by any means, and you will not, under any circumstances, attempt to contact, speak to, or in any other way, fuck with my boyfriend.’

Mellenby, who had paled under this onslaught suddenly scoffed. ‘Yours? He’s not yours! He’s-‘

‘Mine,’ said Alex with finality, and he pushed forward again, and Mellenby yelped as the marble edges of the statue’s plinth pressed further between his shoulder blades. ‘And I absolutely fucking dare you to try me on that, because I know what you did. All of it.’ He paused, regarding him. ‘But you don’t know me.’

‘So,’ he said, straightening up again, ‘Why don’t you just fuck off back to whatever fucking rathole you crawled out of, there’s a good chap. And please don’t think that I won’t know where to find you if I need to. Because I will.’ He smoothed the collar of Mellenby’s coat as he straightened also. ‘On you go then.’

He watched Mellenby leave and as the door closed behind him, let out a long breath. He turned on his heel, then paused, remembering the flowers. He reopened the door; they were still lying where he had dropped them on the stoop. He picked them up and cast a quick searching glance across the Square but Mellenby was nowhere to be seen and he closed the door again.

Molly approached this time, took the flowers with a hurried gesture of thanks and disappeared again quickly as he strode towards the centre of the atrium, where Thomas was still standing, though less tensely than a few minutes earlier.

‘Alex, really, you didn’t have to..’

Alex was amused. ‘I know I didn’t have to. I chose to.’ He placed a large hand on Thomas’ shoulder. ‘Alright then, trouble?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ He grimaced. ‘I was, I’ll admit, slightly unnerved. I hadn’t expected..’

‘No. I know. But he’s gone now. And if he knows what’s good for him, he won’t be coming back.’

**Author's Note:**

> Because in this AU at least - and bearing in mind what we’re told in Foxglove Summer - if Mellenby was somehow still around in the present day, he’d definitely be trying to get his hands on the Black Library.


End file.
